Piety and Spirituality According to Scripture
Two very misunderstood words in our modern religious vocabulary are the adjectives “pious” and “spiritual.” The former is used as a pejorative. It is even perceived as a kin to being moralistic or legalistic. The latter is used in a more positive light, but it is also perfectly nebulous. The last quarter of the twentieth century saw a rise in “spirituality” in the modern West, even as there was a corresponding decline in church attendance and even belief in God. How do we make sense of all this?
The word piety comes from the Latin pietas, essentially having to do with one’s duty, loyalty, or devotion. So it is a matter of the whole heart, but issuing forth in total moral commitment. It is objective, implying a right way to think about God, how to worship Him, and how to live with our fellow man. It is out of inevitable disagreements over its objective status that Evangelicals have not typically gravitated to this concept. The concept of spirituality is more familiar, or so it would seem. That is because this word has been given to subjectivism. As beauty is said to be in the eye of the beholder, so is the beholder. The “spiritual” dimension of man is “on the inside,” or “a matter of the heart,” and so cannot be questioned, much less be held up to some external standard.
How different our spiritual forefathers would have thought about these things. The Puritan John Flavel tied the whole together like a maxim:
“The soul is the life of the body, faith is the life of the soul, and Christ is the life of faith.”1
Each circle is inside of another, ultimately all in one reality: God’s reality. Here we have the spiritual actor (the soul), the subjective principle of its life (faith), and its objective end (God in Christ). They go together, and the order matters. As true Christians, we must go to Scripture to see how God Himself defines piety and spirituality. Of course the Bible is not a religious dictionary in a formal sense. It does not arrange its data by terms and their definition in alphabetical order, or in any other kind of order. Nevertheless we should not be surprised to find more than enough of what we need to know about our spiritual nature and its proper activities.
Three Scriptural Themes for Piety and Spirituality
There are three basic themes set forth early in the Bible that chart the course for piety and spirituality: 1. God’s design. 2. God’s promises. 3. God’s law. However else one may divide a biblical view of piety and spirituality, we would certainly see these three foundational themes marking the real difference between the biblical and the unbiblical brands.
In the first place, we must speak of these in terms of God’s design. That God made man in His own image (Gen. 1:26-27) at least implies a spiritual dimension of human nature that owes itself entirely to God. This totality of our life is called, in Romans 12:1, λογικὴν λατρείαν ὑμῶν, alternately rendered “your spiritual worship” (ESV), or “spiritual service of worship” (NASB), or “reasonable service” (KJV). There Paul makes this a response to everything he had communicated with the Roman Christians concerning God’s salvation that is by grace alone, through faith alone, in the merits of Christ alone. True Christian worship, then, is a response to God’s initiating and sustaining grace. It must be. The sinner cannot worship God apart from Christ. Being spiritually dead (Eph. 2:1-2), he cannot be properly spiritual or pleasing to God (Rom. 8:7-8). It is instructive that the imagery Paul used in Romans 12:1 is that of a body placed atop an altar—the suggestion being that of a “whole life” sacrifice, though not so as to earn God’s favor but to reflect and to revel in God’s glory.
Secondly, we must look to God’s promise. It is one thing to have designed the creation of man for spirituality and piety, but, given the reality of sin and the particularistic nature of the new creation—not all will be saved and, in fact, all start out “separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world” (Eph. 2:12)—so, it is another thing to consider the idea of living for God unless we knew how this applies favorably to us. How can God-hating rebels speak so glibly about “spirituality”?
Here is where Christ’s offering takes priority over that offering of Romans 12:1. Passages like Galatians 3:13, 1 Peter 2:24, Ephesians 5:2, and 2 Corinthians 5:21, just to name a few, paint the picture of all our sin having been imputed to Christ and punished on the cross, and all His righteousness imputed to us through faith, so as to now have God’s favor. This promise is why we can speak of living unto God’s glory. To doubt it is to doubt his word. To believe it, moment by moment, is the lifeblood of true spirituality.
That third one especially may strike us as odd if what we are looking for is how to experience God, relate to Him, or feel His presence. But piety is about God’s will, not our whims. It is our proper response to what He demands of us. So God’s law gives form to our spiritual life. Contrary to so much of modern religion, the moral law must be seen as the basic framework. And “The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple” (Ps. 19:7). We can hardly call a life “pious” and “spiritual” which begins in suspicion of the divine prerogatives. Likewise if one segregates a part of life from being under Christ’s Lordship.
Worship and Fear of the Lord
If we would move from the underlying themes to specific elements of biblical spirituality and piety, there may seem to be several legitimate places to start. Certainly, however, worship would have to constitute the great end.
Jesus Himself cited the Shema of Deuteronomy 6:4-5 as the “the great and first commandment” (Mat. 22:38). Even the answer to the Samaritan woman, that the Father is seeking those who will “worship in spirit and truth” (Jn. 4:24) is really a reflection of this ultimate purpose of man.
However this raises the question of how the Bible defines worship. It also requires that we recognize a distinction between what has sometimes been called “all of life worship” as opposed to Lord’s Day worship, or that right ordering of the assembly of believers. Since the subject of spirituality and piety is much broader, I will be addressing the more general category.
The Scriptures command our worship with everything that we are. This is true of our physical life: “So glorify God in your body” (1 Cor. 6:19). It is true of our productivity: “Honor the LORD with your wealth and with the firstfruits of all your produce” (Prov. 3:9). It is true of our visible good deeds: “In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Mat. 5:16). It is so true that the Scriptures often treat religion and ethics as one cloth where our tendency is to divorce them: “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world” (Jas. 1:27). It would seem, then, that there is no part of life that ought not be annexed by true spirituality and piety.
On the other hand, it is not necessarily a tunnel-vision pietism that starts with the individual in his or her pursuit of God. Where else would we start? The spiritual life may extend to all, but even the Spirit-filled Christian is at a disadvantage in that the greatest enemy to God’s glory in his life is indwelling sin. The sword of the Spirit must first be pointed inward; or as the Apostles put things, “it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God” (1 Pet. 4:17), “being ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete” (2 Cor. 10:6).
Much of the New Testament teaching on Christian piety is occupied with the subject of sanctification, not only the business of sin-killing but of bearing up under suffering. So piety is a gem that is hammered out in enduring trials and resisting temptation.
Another term that the Scriptures will use for such a person under the shaping influence of the Spirit is “godliness.” According to Thomas Watson, the godly man has “light in the understanding, order in the affections, pliableness in the will, exemplariness in the life.”2
Such a conformity to God’s character is not merely commanded but expounded; and not only that but modeled. The pushback against exemplary interpretation and preaching is a pendulum swing too far, since there are the excellencies of faith, hope, and love put on display—perfectly in Christ alone, yet graced to a sufficient degree in His saints. Otherwise what is that hall of faith in Hebrews 11? And what would it mean to say of Christian leaders to, “Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith” (Heb. 13:7)?
The Bible also teaches this by the use of negative examples. We might think of Demas who had been at the core of Paul’s ministry (Col. 4:14), and yet being a minister did not spare him (2 Tim. 4:9-10). Or we might think of the sons of Aaron, Nadab and Abihu (Lev. 10:1-11), the sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas (1 Sam. 2:12-21), or the whole lot of priests called to account through the prophet Malachi (cf. 1:6-2:9).
In all these cases, the things of God were treated with contempt, if only by passivity and neglect. Of grumbling Israel in the wilderness Paul says, “these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did” (1 Cor. 10:4). So we have held out before us simple depictions of the spiritual and the carnal, the godly and the ungodly.
If I had to list one more central trait of the spiritual man in Scripture, it would be fear of the Lord. Obviously a pious man who does not fear God is a walking contradiction. But we must go as far as to say that one who does not fear God cannot really even be moral. The Parable of the Pharisee and Tax Collector makes the connection between those “who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and [treating] others with contempt” (Lk. 18:9). There is no mystery here. If we think low thoughts of God, we are not likely to think much of others who bear His image.
To be sure, there is a distinction between a servile fear and a filial fear that divides the guilty convict and the child of God. There is this latter, gracious fear worked into the soul by God, so that, “The fear of the LORD is a fountain of life, that one may turn away from the snares of death” (Prov. 14:27).
All other proper motions of the soul and fulfillment of duties in the world hinge upon having a right view of who God is and who we are in relation to Him. Isaiah 6 may be the classic picture in the Old Testament. To be undone before God’s holiness, yet, once cleansed, to answer the call to communicate His glories—whatever does not flow out of this fountain of transformation cannot be truly spiritual.
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1. John Flavel, quoted in Joel Beeke and Mark Jones, A Puritan Theology (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2012), 526.
2. Thomas Watson, The Godly Man’s Picture (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 2007), 13.
